clem
/klɛm/
clem verb: to be hungry; starve. Also the alternative form of clam.
Verb
clem (third-person singular simple present clems, present participle clemming, simple past and past participle clemmed)
- To be hungry; starve.
- "[…] Here he's back home again, and without work, and without a penny, and thou knows t' little one and I were pretty well clemmed to death when thou got us a bit o' bread and meat last night. We were that!"1889, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr, Between Two Loves, Ch. VI, p. 110
- Who are half clemmed from year’s end to year’s end, and see no close to it, no hope, no finish but the pauper’s deals!1919, Stanley J. Weyman, “IX. Old Things”, in The Great House
Noun
clem (plural clems)
Proper noun capitalized: Clem
Clem
- A diminutive of the male given name Clement.
- A diminutive of the female given name Clementine.
Also used as
clem is also the alternative form of clam.
Synonyms of clem
Forms of clem
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | clems |
| present participle | clemming |
| past participle | clemmed |
| past | clemmed |
| alternative form | clam |
| Noun | |
| plural | clems |
Origin of clem
Inherited from Middle English *clemmen, *clammen, from Old English clemman, clæmman (“to press, surround”), from Proto-West Germanic *klammjan (“to squeeze”). Cognate with Dutch klemmen (“to jam, pinch, stick”), German klemmen (“to jam, clamp; to be stuck, stick [to a surface]”).
From Old English clām (“paste, mortar, mud, clay, poultice”), from Proto-West Germanic *klaim, equivalent to cloam. Similar linguistic development led to the Northumbrian pronunciation of hyem, equivalent to the RP home.
Shortening.
Words that rhyme with clem
Questions about clem
- What does clem mean?
- Clem means to be hungry; starve.
- What part of speech is clem?
- Clem can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce clem?
- Clem is pronounced /klɛm/.
- What is the past tense of clem?
- The past tense of clem is clemmed.
Words near clem in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: clem (page history and authors); Clem (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-clem.ogg.
Cite this entry: “clem.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/clem. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.